reasons to separate premium ticket packs

The only reason I can come up with is to limit the resource that free players can gain. Premium ticket packs no longer have extra bonus, the triple chance of new unit. And it is so likely that it will keep the same forever, like brave packs and starter's pack. (We may not get TEs or event items thought ticket packs)

Fanta is very stingy recently. It seems that they don't need free players anymore.

edit: If they are doing so, further impact would be making rank reward less attractive. They already changed all rank reward to personal TE and premium tickets, except cards. Personal things won't do much help to most players. And if tickets become less useful, the competitiveness would be weaker. Thus they will make less money eventually. I hope they are wise enough to keep this from happening.

Last edited by cmud2007 on Fri Dec 07, 2012 6:53 pm; edited 1 time in total

The only reason I can come up with is to limit the resource that free players can gain. Premium ticket packs no longer have extra bonus, the triple chance of new unit. And it is so likely that it will keep the same forever, like brave packs and starter's pack. (We may not get TEs or event items thought ticket packs)

Fanta is very stingy recently. It seems that they don't need free players anymore.

Hope that's not their mindset, it's one thing to increase their earnings; it's another to promise free-to-play game and make it inaccessible unless you pay. At that point, most of the free player would just drop the game, and with it game activity will see a nose dive...

I already invested quite a bit into the game, so I hope this game will last long... Well, let's see what happens I guess.

Yeah, it really seems like they're trying to force free players into buying. But this makes it more of a challenge, I find. The aspect about this game that I love the most is its economy. It's almost like a stock market, and I'm enjoying myself enormously taking part in it.

Also, while the Fanta team has been implementing measures to favour paying players, they did throw a bone at us with the Den of Sin prizes. That event was a TE and Potion goldmine while it lasted.

I'm not taking their defense. I just believe that the game does not shut you out if you don't pay. You CAN get six stars as a free player, it just takes more time and dedication and makes you appreciate your cards more. Of course, if you want to rank well in events, or even compete for the top ten or top three, it's another matter altogether. But at that level, it's not so much a competition of skill than a competition to see who will throw the most money at the game.

Ironic how they're advertising that the game has 400k registered users and they celebrate it by further limiting worthwhile in-game items.

The only thing we can hope for is that the change wanted to clarify that premium tickets does not have increased chance for event cards. Knowing them though this will probably prevent people from obtaining event items.

With more and more people playing the game, they need to increase the chances of aquireing unique cards. If not by packs or boxes, but with events. I would like to see the top 500 ranked players get a worth while 5* card like with werewolf. I would like to see the top 100 ranked players get a 6* card.

Mobage needs to offer more avenues to obtain worth while cards to even those who don't pay.

((BTW Blargod, I just noticed your avetar has eyes! I always saw it as a visor like robocop. Haha....silly me))

I wish they would do that. The inclusion of the 7* and now this is making me hate the game more and more. When this game started off, the game had more avenues for lower level players to gain higher level cards much more quickly than other games like RoB.

With device restrictions, trade restrictions, and now this? It's seriously becoming a joke for free players.

This latest event also has a lot less people getting the rank reward 4*, which makes me sad - only people ranked between 200 and 700 will get Anne, and everyone past 700 will just get premium tickets and worthless TEs. The last event had a pretty large range for both of its 4* rank rewards though, so I'm not calling foul just yet, but hopefully this doesn't become a trend.

Also, I'm not very fond of having the event bonus units be part of normal packs, especially for this one with no 4* unit (meaning if you can't afford a 5* unit that everyone wants, you'll need to pay for an overpriced 3* that will have no special value after the event is over). Much rather have them part of a special pack, even if they'll be added to the normal packs after the event...

If you take a step back and look at the Mobage's galaxy of games you'll see it's a general trend.And honnestly, you can't blame them, they're here to make money after all (surprise!).

One, almost scandalous, example, is Blood brothers and its exact copy Fatal Frontier, down to the in-game level design, they made after it. The only difference is in the card design , the latest is sci-fi oriented, the events are the exact same, the card skills are the same for christ sake ! The down time in BB is far worst than here, the events are very expensive if you expect to rank, but it's sort of balanced with a more open trade feature, think of a public market where we've a closed one here (that is if you want to spend hours playing the game of buying low and selling high) . I could also talk about the Marvel card game game wich is using the exact same engine and design than Rage of Bahamut.You should be happy to be able to play that much of Fantasica for free, other big Mobage's games are more money oriented.

And in top of that, even if you're willing to pay a bit, well sort of a bit, with 30$ you can't even get a mega box (short of 1k coins...). Compare this cost to "conventionnal" video games.If you look at it, it's very expensive for almost nothing, a "little", and who knows the formula for it btw ???!!!, chance to get a 5+ card...But it works, except when it's broken like after the Den when you couldn't pull the new cards, saw anything related to that even the slightest apologies or refund ?

Free player have almost no use to Mobage, except eating ressources on servers/bandwithd and making the google/itunes apps counter go up, wich is always good up to a point where it isn't worth it anymore.The paying players on the other hand, fighting each others for top ranks, are what they want because it's where the money is. Realize that in Blood Brothers again, some cards are selling for > 1000 US $ !!!! In this game, it's also here, on another forum I won't name, 300$ for a Vlad, < 0.5$ for TE (versus the ~1$ with Mobage).

So in the end, they're working to deliver a product, so don't expect them to handle the result to us for free.Finally, to beat what's left of this little piece of meat of a very dead horse or is it hits skeleton, you can't expect everyone to have the same chance/result/award without evenly working for it ; be it with time, money or whatever the currency is.

I think the one thing that game companies sometimes don't consider is that without the free players, the paying players wouldn't have people to be better than, thus taking away part of the satisfaction. I am okay with the fact that Mobage wants to make money; however, I don't think it's too much to except for them to atleast take the players into consideration once in a while. One big example is the fact that you get 2* after paying money card packs for boxes (although they might have changed that).Either way, I'm determined to stay a free player as long as possible. I'm still having fun.

Actually, Mobage is just a platform, DeNA is the compagny behind it and it happens that most of the more successful games are build on the damn same model...down to the events, I mean come on.

Also, it's probably with good reasons that they received a cease-and-desist order from the Japan Fair Trade Commission for violating the anti-monopoly act by forcing game developers to exclusively release titles for the Mobage platform...SOURCEBut to be honnest, outside of Japan (for now), you just see the top of the DeNA's iceberg.

Quote :

but I do know that Mobage already make plenty off even the free players from information skimming.

Bingo !On a side note, I play in a sandbox with a dedicated mail account...

The whole developer-publisher-money relationship is always a giant mess, too many factors in there and without a inside connection, you really won't know which side is in control of the situation.

That aside, bleachcosplay has a really good point. Sure, free players don't give Mobage/SS any money, not directly anyways; but they're useful in their own ways. They're invaluable in terms of getting good feedback/response for your game since a larger sample pool almost always translates to more accurate data. They of course also have the potential to become paying customers as they invest more and more time into the game, and yes they're there to make the game community feel more alive and give the paying player someone to compete with and "feel better" about it. But in order to do that, you'll have to at least give the free player a chance; people enjoy challenges, but no one likes a one sided battle, nor is it exciting in the least bit.

Now, to these points Mobage/SS I feel is doing a pretty good job so far actually. As long as they keep it up, I'm in for the long haul in Fantasica. I think it's just the recent shut out of several ways the game used to give free player access to free in game resources that caused a lot of concern. I think the problem is two folds, one is of course Mobage/SS trying to squeeze more money out of the playerbase, and the second is just counter measures against hacker/glitch that caused some collateral damage to the free players. I'm still not too concerned yet since they are still giving some "handouts" to the player base like last event's TE and Pot rewards (Japan gets tickets instead, much less useful). Some of the newer measure they're taking could just be testing the waters with new ways of stopping small amount of player from abusing the free giveaways and to test out new monetize strategies. Hopefully they'll remove the unpopular implementations and keep the popular ones.

I am a free player of Blood Brothers and I have to say BB are more generous to both paying and free players.For example I can get top epic heroes (similar to 5*s in Fantasica) from copper and silver coins, which are quite easy to gain in game (similar to brave packs in Fantasica).And for players who paying real money, they get all rare and above heroes (which means 4* and above in fantasica) from paying packs.

The shortcoming of BB is it lacks efficient communicating system in game. I feel like playing alone or playing with AIs for most of the time.

I am a free player of Blood Brothers and I have to say BB are more generous to both paying and free players.For example I can get top epic heroes (similar to 5*s in Fantasica) from copper and silver coins, which are quite easy to gain in game (similar to brave packs in Fantasica).And for players who paying real money, they get all rare and above heroes (which means 4* and above in fantasica) from paying packs.

The shortcoming of BB is it lacks efficient communicating system in game. I feel like playing alone or playing with AIs for most of the time.

Does blood brothers have a premium ticket equivalent by any chance? I play Rage of Bahamut and Legend Packs, which are equivalent to premium tickets, are roughly given 3 per 10 days (Sometimes 2). These tickets can give from 2*s to 7*s (equivalents) and our equivalent for brave packs can give us 4*s albeit really rare (played for 6 months and I only got one right now).

The important thing about these legend packs is that if you use them, they often come with bonus items, such as Cure Waters (Potion equivalent), Holy Powders (TEs) and bazaar tickets. The Potion and TE equivalents are tradable.

Please recall that Mobage is just the content delivery. Silicon Studios designs the game, Mobage sets the prices.

You can't honestly fairly compare SS/Fantasica to Blood Brothers or Pocket Planes because the software teams are different.

I'm not entirely sure how the dynamic works between developer - publisher - money in this case, but I do know that Mobage already make plenty off even the free players from information skimming.

I was under the impression that the original version of the game doesn't have the non-tradeable TEs/potions, meaning free players have much more access to such items (albeit still at a very low rate). Am I missing something else here, or is Mobage (or whoever is localizing the game) screwing things up a bit?

Also, as for the premium tickets being switched to a different pack, that may just be because they didn't want players to have the assumption that paid packs and ticket packs have the same rarity chances; from what I understand, you have a much higher chance to get rarer cards from a normal pack than from premium tickets, but it "looks" like you get the same thing, so free players that see the distribution from ticket packs may think that they don't want to spend money if it'll only get them a 2* card, without realizing that they'll be more likely to get something better.

I am a free player of Blood Brothers and I have to say BB are more generous to both paying and free players.For example I can get top epic heroes (similar to 5*s in Fantasica) from copper and silver coins, which are quite easy to gain in game (similar to brave packs in Fantasica).And for players who paying real money, they get all rare and above heroes (which means 4* and above in fantasica) from paying packs.

The shortcoming of BB is it lacks efficient communicating system in game. I feel like playing alone or playing with AIs for most of the time.

Does blood brothers have a premium ticket equivalent by any chance? I play Rage of Bahamut and Legend Packs, which are equivalent to premium tickets, are roughly given 3 per 10 days (Sometimes 2). These tickets can give from 2*s to 7*s (equivalents) and our equivalent for brave packs can give us 4*s albeit really rare (played for 6 months and I only got one right now).

The important thing about these legend packs is that if you use them, they often come with bonus items, such as Cure Waters (Potion equivalent), Holy Powders (TEs) and bazaar tickets. The Potion and TE equivalents are tradable.

Scarlet coins are something like premium tickets. They were rank top 1000 or 2000ish rewards. They were also given as gifts when BB reach certain number downloads in google play store. I believe scarlet coins are exactly the same as 300 mobage coin pulls.

Also, as for the premium tickets being switched to a different pack, that may just be because they didn't want players to have the assumption that paid packs and ticket packs have the same rarity chances; from what I understand, you have a much higher chance to get rarer cards from a normal pack than from premium tickets, but it "looks" like you get the same thing, so free players that see the distribution from ticket packs may think that they don't want to spend money if it'll only get them a 2* card, without realizing that they'll be more likely to get something better.

That's what we're hoping but I mean really... with their current track record? I wouldn't be surprised if they did make it useless.

*edit

As an example, the 100k bonus for the soul shards is said not to be Aragon but just a bunch of large soul stones. Considering that this is on the lines of false advertisement, I can clearly say that Silicon Studios is becoming more and more unscrupulous with their methods.

cmud2007 wrote:

Scarlet coins are something like premium tickets. They were rank top 1000 or 2000ish rewards. They were also given as gifts when BB reach certain number downloads in google play store. I believe scarlet coins are exactly the same as 300 mobage coin pulls.

Ah I see. So they didn't bother to differentiate it as well. Legend Packs are also the same for their mobage coin counterparts although there are much better deals now.

Last edited by Blargod on Sat Dec 08, 2012 9:32 pm; edited 1 time in total

as a free player ! i still able to have access to most of the 6* ( i been playing for about 3 weeks) the only way of me making money is buy low and sell high ! and i made thousand of T.E from it...However, thats dueable because the game give a lot of t.e before and i was able to save up a good amount to do my little business !! now i dont see how can i do it again without spend like atleast 100$ to buy t.e ! another downside is if u buy cardpack ! if u re lucky than its ok ! but if u unlucky (most likely u will) ur money will be wasted for nothing!! Yah NOTHING (4* are worthless now ) its like u buy a lottery and the chance is like 1% or something ! so you force to buy T.E if you dont want to take risk !! and if you want to start business like me u need atleast 100 T.E to buy a decent 5* and start !! i really hope the game developer implant something that help the FREE player !! or make the Card Pack more usefull so atleast if we dont get 6 or 5* we have something to keep for....! well thats how i feel about it !!

as a free player ! i still able to have access to most of the 6* ( i been playing for about 3 weeks) the only way of me making money is buy low and sell high ! and i made thousand of T.E from it...However, thats dueable because the game give a lot of t.e before and i was able to save up a good amount to do my little business !! now i dont see how can i do it again without spend like atleast 100$ to buy t.e ! another downside is if u buy cardpack ! if u re lucky than its ok ! but if u unlucky (most likely u will) ur money will be wasted for nothing!! Yah NOTHING (4* are worthless now ) its like u buy a lottery and the chance is like 1% or something ! so you force to buy T.E if you dont want to take risk !! and if you want to start business like me u need atleast 100 T.E to buy a decent 5* and start !! i really hope the game developer implant something that help the FREE player !! or make the Card Pack more usefull so atleast if we dont get 6 or 5* we have something to keep for....! well thats how i feel about it !!

They've been going through a restrictive trend for the past few months. I think they'll need a wake up call just like RoB had during October (If I remember correctly) when a lot of players left due to mass hackings and trade restrictions. Of course, we're not still sure if they're restricting event items but it's worrisome.

Also not to nitpick or anything... I thought you pulled a cyclops a few weeks back?

The main reason why they have separated the "free packs" from a 300 coin one and the normal premium one is so that they can introduce Silver Premium tickets which guarantees a 4* or greater. The only thing I'm worried about is that "blaze ticket" type events can only be gained from the 300 coin ones. I hope that isn't the case and by using the 300 coin ones it just means you get a few more tickets rather.

as a free player ! i still able to have access to most of the 6* ( i been playing for about 3 weeks) the only way of me making money is buy low and sell high ! and i made thousand of T.E from it...However, thats dueable because the game give a lot of t.e before and i was able to save up a good amount to do my little business !! now i dont see how can i do it again without spend like atleast 100$ to buy t.e ! another downside is if u buy cardpack ! if u re lucky than its ok ! but if u unlucky (most likely u will) ur money will be wasted for nothing!! Yah NOTHING (4* are worthless now ) its like u buy a lottery and the chance is like 1% or something ! so you force to buy T.E if you dont want to take risk !! and if you want to start business like me u need atleast 100 T.E to buy a decent 5* and start !! i really hope the game developer implant something that help the FREE player !! or make the Card Pack more usefull so atleast if we dont get 6 or 5* we have something to keep for....! well thats how i feel about it !!

Still, you had some more assets to start off since money was technically put into the game. I feel sorry for newer free players since it's so much harder for them to get anywhere now compared to before.